“At any rate I will keep it until I am free,” I answered, carefully averting my eyes from her.
“If that time comes?” he retorted.
“Just so,” I said.
I think it was his purpose to make me angry; but at this point one of the others, the ruffian who had kept watch in the outer room on the night of the outrage at the Bluff, struck in. “Make an end!” he growled with an oath. “Isn’t it enough,” addressing me, “that you’ve the use of your throat to-night that you must argy, argy, argy! Keep your breath to cool your victuals, stranger — while you have it! And, curse me, you’re as bad, Levi! Let’s have an end! And do you,” to the men at the fire, “get on with that pork and hominy!”
The girl did not say a word. She sat somewhat apart wrapped in a cloak and leaning forward. Her elbow rested on her knee, her chin on her hand, her eyes were fixed on the fire. The pose was one of utter weariness and dejection, but it was so natural, so unforced that she might have been sitting in the room alone. She seemed to be unconscious not only of my presence but of the presence of the men. And they, rough and desperate as they were, stood evidently in awe of her. As they moved to and fro about their cooking they passed close to her, and at times they swore. But I could see that their ease was assumed. Her personality, her tragic position, the respect in which women are held in the southern colonies, were as a wall about her — for the present.
And what was she thinking, I wondered, as she sat, apparently as heedless of me, as of the men who rubbed elbows with her? Was she thinking only of her father and his peril, and of the chance which her passing weakness had come so near to forfeiting? Was she weighing that chance between hope and fear, and with no thought except of him who lay in the prison house opposite the tavern at Winnsboro’? Or was she dreaming of me as well as of her father? Thinking of me with pity, with gratitude, with — love? Had I built the bridge? Had I crossed the gulf?
I could not say, seeing her so still, so remote, so passionless. At any rate I could not be sure. The whole width of the hearth divided us, and she sat with her face turned from me. Not a glance of her veiled eyes sped my way, and apparently she was not conscious of my presence. So that by and by that of which I had been confident a little earlier began to seem doubtful, a dream, a mere delusion on my part.
And yet it might be true! It might be that I did exist for her, largely, filling the room, shutting out her view of the men about us, encroaching even on her sense of her father’s peril. It might be so. At any rate it was to this question that my whole mind was directed — what was she thinking of me? What were the thoughts behind that averted face? Was I still the betrayer of her father? Or — or what was I?
Presently the men began to pour the mess which they had cooked into rough bowls, and for a time the steam, savoury enough to the senses of a hungry man, switched off my thoughts. I took note of the room, while I awaited my turn. The smoke of the drift-wood fire, mingling with the fog that eddied in from the marshes, hid the roof, but the air below was tolerably clear. The men had propped their guns against the wall opposite me and I counted them. There were five. An active man, I thought, might have cast himself between the arms and their owners, and snatching a gun might have held off the five — Levi, I knew, was a white-livered cur. But a crippled man could not do this; nor, as I found a moment later when one of the men thrust a bowl and a hunch of corn-bread on my lap, could he with any success cut up tough pork with a pocket-knife.
The cooking was coarse, but I was famished, and I wrestled manfully with the difficulty. I did so to little purpose, however. The bowl slipped on my knees, I could not steady it. A man sniggered, another laughed. They stopped eating to look at me. At that I lost patience. “Will you cut it for me?” I said, holding out the bowl to the nearest man.
He refused — the truth was my difficulty entertained their clownish souls. “D — n me, cut your own victuals,” he answered churlishly. “Enough, that I’ve cooked ‘em for you.”
“Be thankful you’ve a throat to swallow ‘em with!” said a second.
The others laughed; and at that, I who had taken with coolness their threat to murder me, felt such a rage rise within me, helpless as I was, that the tears stood in my eyes. I looked at Constantia.
There was the faintest stain of color in her cheeks, but apparently she was unconscious of what was passing. Still and self-contained, she was eating and drinking with the steady purpose of one who was set on maintaining her strength. As quickly as anger had risen, it died in me, and, alas, my heart sank with it. The men might jeer and taunt and laugh, I no longer cared. I finished my meal as I could, heeding their amusement as little as she did. For the savor had left the food. I saw that I must have been mistaken. Yes, I must have been mistaken. She could not care for me.
When all was eaten Levi went down with two of the men to set a guard, and he was absent for some time. When he returned, wood was put on the fire and the lamp was extinguished. For a time he and the men remained apart talking in low voices, but soon, one by one, they left the group, pulled cloaks or blankets about them and lay down — one of them across the trap-door. Levi made the girl some offer of accommodation, but she refused it, and dragging a second box to the fire, to eke out the first, she made a rough couch, on which she sat with her feet raised and her back against the wall. I lay on the opposite side of the fire, some way from her; and at times I fancied that her eyes dwelt on me. But I could not be sure, for her face, half shrouded by her cloak and in shadow, was hard to distinguish; while I, when I looked that way, met the light.
If I had been sure that her eyes were upon me, if I had been sure that she thought of me and thanked me, I could have faced the prospect more lightly. But I had no certainty of this; I had, indeed, much reason to doubt it, and I looked forward to a night of suspense. I foresaw that as the warmth died in me and the small hours chilled my bones and damped my resolution, I should repent of what I had done. A man snored, another muttered in his sleep, the mosquitoes troubled me. At intervals a horse moved restlessly in the stable below. A marsh-owl, hunting along the river bank, tore the night from time to time with its shrill screech. I had no hope of sleep.
The danger that is thrust on a man, he must meet. But the danger into which, being no hero, he has thrust himself, is another matter. I knew that long before morning, I should feel that I had cast away my life. Thoughts of Osgodby and England, visions of home faces, now thousands of miles away, would rise to reproach me. I should see — with that terrible four o’clock in the morning clearness — that for a fancy, for a woman’s whim, for a fantastic point of honor, I had done what I had no right to do; I had sacrificed my life and all that I had valued a short time back. I should remember that she had scarcely touched my hand in friendship, had never listened to a word of love, never said even that she forgave me!
But blessed be the soldier’s habit of making the best of the present! In half an hour, before the strangeness of the situation had quite worn off, before her near neighborhood, at another time so disturbing, had grown familiar, before the owl’s sharp note had ceased to startle, I dozed. And presently worn out by strain — for sorrow sleeps soundly — I fell into a deep slumber which lasted until long after daylight.
When I awoke there were only two men in the room. They were chopping up drift-wood in a corner, and it was the sound of their hatchets that had roused me. The fire had burned low on the hearth, and my teeth chattered. A fog filled the outer world, poured in through the windows, laid a clammy touch on everything. Firelight had done much the night before to redeem the squalor of the room; this morning, daylight showed it in all its cold and grisly reality. And where was Constantia? Where was Levi? I crossed the room to one of the windows and I looked out. They might be below. But at a distance of five yards the eye plunged into a sea of mist. I could see nothing, and I turned about, shivering, the cold in my bones.
“You’re a mighty good sleeper,” one of the men said as I met his eye.
“I was t
ired.”
“Well, it would be more than I could manage!” he answered cryptically. “Do you think they’ll let him go!”
“Captain Wilmer?”
He nodded. He was a shock-headed man in a frayed hunting shirt, buckskin leggings and mocassins. A greasy ragged unshaven figure of a man.
“No,” I said, “I’m sure they will not. Would you?” —
“D — d if I would,” he answered, grinning. “I never let a ‘possum go yet that I got a grip of! But you’ve spunk, I’ll say that!”
The other man turned and silenced him with an oath, but I marked the speaker for the best-natured of the band. Something might be made of him, at a pinch. Meanwhile the two, having finished their task, stirred up the embers, piled on wood and started the fire. When they had done this I crouched miserably enough over the blaze, while the two went about getting a meal. I noticed that the guns had been removed. It struck me that, were I only fifty yards away in this fog I should be safe from pursuit. But how was I to win those fifty yards!
As I thought of this and with my mind’s eye measured the height from the windows to the ground, I heard voices below, and after a short interval Constantia came up the ladder, muffled in her cloak. She did not look in my direction, but she came straight to the fire and stooped over it to warm her hands. Then, hardly moving her lips, and choosing a moment when the two men had turned their backs, “Be close to me,” she breathed “if trouble comes. Keep away now.”
She moved some paces from me as soon as she had spoken, and when Levi and the other two men appeared, we were standing on opposite sides of the hearth. Levi cast a sharp glance at me; I think he had his suspicions — God knows what had roused them when I had seen nothing! But he only swore at the men for letting down the fire and at the fire for giving no warmth, and at the morning for being cold. If ever there was an ill-conditioned cur, he was one!
For me, I was no longer cold. Her words, her tone, tingled through my veins, set my pulses beating, did all but give strength to my useless arm. I could face anything now, I could face the worst now, and hope to live through it.
My relief, indeed, was unspeakable. But apart from me — and I masked my feelings — it was a gloomy party that, shivering in the aguish air, gathered about the poor meal and ate and drank in a brutish fashion. Constantia kept her old place on the farther side of the hearth, and muffled in her cloak preserved a stern silence. Her face by the morning light looked white and drawn, so that even in a lover’s eyes it lacked something of its ordinary beauty. But the strain which she was putting on herself did not appear until the meal was over, and we had risen from our seats. Then when the men, stuffing their corn-cob pipes, had gone, some to feed the horses, and some to lean yawning from the windows and curse the fog, she began to walk up and down the room; while Levi watched her openly and I in secret. To and fro, she paced, the hood of her cloak drawn over her head, to and fro, this way and that, restlessly; only breaking her march at intervals to glance from the window and sigh, and so to resume her walk.
“There’ll be no news yet, ma’am,” Levi said after a time. He spoke with servility but I guessed that he was suspicious and uneasy. I wondered if he had intercepted some glance meant for me.
She gave him no answer by word or look. She continued to walk up and down. Impatience seemed to be getting the better of her. She could not be still.
“They’ll be having the message, about this time,” he said, glancing at me in turn. “Not a minute earlier.”
I nodded. I had no doubt that he was right.
“Curse me,” he continued, “but as sure as there are snakes in Virginia, you’re a cool fish, Major! You mightn’t have a tongue in your head. What is it, I’d like to know, you have up your sleeve?”
I laughed. It was easy to laugh since she had spoken to me.
The man with the buckskin shirt was sitting on the sill of the farther window, swinging his feet. He began to whistle. The girl stopped in her walk, as if she had been struck. She looked at him with something in her face that was equal to a man’s worst oath. Then, “oh, hush!” she said. “Hush!”
The fellow stared at her in astonishment, but he ceased to whistle. She stood. For a minute or two there was no sound in the room except the bubbling of a foul pipe, no sound outside but the wailing cry of a waterfowl. It was the mallard’s cry that she had heard, perhaps; for presently she resumed her walk, Levi still watching her with a crafty eye. If she was listening he was thinking, and it was then for the first time that it struck me with something of a shock that he was not the man to let me go — however Wilmer might fare. A bad thought that, to intrude at this time!
One of the horses pawed restlessly in the room below, and the man who had gone down to feed them, shouted a question from the foot of the ladder. Levi answered him. The interruption this caused brought the same look of impatience, of endurance, of sheer suffering to the girl’s face. She stood, she turned to me; for the first time, as if she could no longer control herself, she spoke to me openly. “What time is it?” she asked.
“Half past ten,” I said. “I fear that you cannot expect news yet.” I was moved indeed, moved to the heart with pity for her; and pained, in the midst of my own anxiety, to think that she should pass intolerable hours in expecting what could not come yet — and in my view would not come at all. By and by things would be better. The sun would suck up the vapors, we should breathe more freely, we should be able to look abroad, we should see something if it were but the sun-lit marshes. As it was, the grizly room, the choking fog, the men, the suspense, set the worst face on everything and filled me with loathing.
Presently a flight of birds passed the house with a whirring of wings and a single note of alarm. The man at the window leant out to follow them with his eye. He muttered something about a gun, and again there was silence, while Constantia resumed her restless march, and Levi followed her with his eyes.
A long, long quarter of an hour followed, and then the silence was broken. Out of the fog came a faint whooping cry, distant and tremulous. The girl was the first to hear it and she stood, as if turned to stone. I saw her stiffen, I saw her eyes dilate, her lips grow white. Her gaze met mine in an agony of questioning. For a moment she ceased to breathe, so intently she listened. Then the cry rose again, still distant but louder. She turned to the trap-door, as if to go down.
But her limbs failed her — at any rate Levi was before her. I suppose he had studied her as closely as I had. He bounded to the head of the ladder, and slipped down it, calling out to her that he would see what it was, calling out to the remaining man to look to me. The girl, thus forestalled, turned from the ladder, and went to the window. She leant on the sill, and I saw that she was shaking from head to foot. “It is Tom!” she murmured.
“Tom!” I exclaimed.
“Yes! Tom!” she said, her breath coming in sobs. “He has news. Oh, God in His mercy grant that it be good news!”
We saw Levi and two of the men run from the house, and vanish in the fog that hid the road. We heard the cry once more — it was near at hand now — but there followed on it a confused outcry, a thudding of feet, a shot — the flame of which for an instant rent the mist — a struggle. The girl sank against me, and if I had not put my arm round her and supported her, she would have fallen. “It was Tom!” she gasped. “It was Tom!”
“Then there’s some foul play on foot!” I cried.
“Yes, foul play,” she whispered. “They’ll not let us have the news! They’ll keep the news from us!” For a moment I thought that she would collapse altogether, but as suddenly as she had given way, she recovered. She drew a deep fluttering breath, released herself from my arm, stood up. She glanced, pale and frowning, at the man who leant from the other window. He, too, was striving to make out what was passing, and from time to time he gave vent to his excitement in an oath. He had forgotten us, and forgotten his duty, too, if it was to guard us. While one might count five she considered him; then deftly, with her eye
s still fixed on him she drew a pistol from some hidden place in her dress, and slipped it into my hand. “Can you use it?” she whispered.
“Yes,” I muttered.
Then, “Now!” she said.
I cocked it, saw that the priming was in its place, and took two steps towards the man. “Halloa!” I cried.
He drew in his head and found himself covered by the pistol; a pistol is a thing a one-armed man can use. “Go down!” I said. “Quick!” He opened his mouth to speak. “Quick, my man, go down!” I repeated. “Or — that’s better!” I said, as, still covered by the muzzle he moved unwillingly to the head of the ladder, and began, swearing furiously, to descend. “Tell your rogue of a leader,” I went on, “to come under the window and speak to me!”
I should have followed the man down, seen him out, and barred the outer door, thus securing the horses; but one of the gang was in the lower doorway, and though his attention was fixed on the scene that was passing outside I feared to lose all by trying to gain too much. Instead I waited until our man’s head was below the level of the floor, then I dropped the pistol and shut down the trap upon him. As quickly as I did it, Constantia was at my elbow with the heaviest case she could drag forward. We set it on the trap-door, furiously piled a second on the top of it and a third on that. Then we looked at one another. Her eyes were gloomy. “They have killed him!” she exclaimed. “They have killed Tom!”
“I hope not,” I said. “They may have fired to frighten him!”
“And the news!” she panted. She clasped her hands. “He brought news!”
The news? Ay, it was that which had done it! She was hungering, thirsting, parched for the news, and they kept it from her! She could have killed the men, for that! And yet, what news, I wondered, had she in her mind? What news could she expect at this hour of the day, when Pete could barely have delivered his message?
Still that was a small question beside the fact that I was out of the snare, was free, was armed. And she was with me, one with me, leaning on my care and protection. I looked round the dreary room; it was changed, it was glorified, I could have shouted with joy. Only now when it had passed from me did I gauge the depth of the shadow of death! Only now did I measure, with a pistol in my hand, my fear of the rope!
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 629
